1. Field of the Invention
Example embodiments of the present invention relate to methods of producing carbonate minerals and apparatuses of producing the carbonate minerals. More particularly, example embodiments of the present invention relate to methods of producing carbonate minerals for sequestering carbon dioxide and apparatuses of producing the carbonate minerals for performing the methods.
2. Description of the Related Art
Carbon dioxide is a typical greenhouse gas that is associated with global warming. The carbon dioxide is generally released when fossil fuel burns. The Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming requires reduction of the carbon dioxide.
Recently, for sequestering the carbon dioxide, the carbon dioxide may be injected into ocean repositories under the ground or may be sequestered by forming carbonate minerals using alkaline earth metal mineral and the carbon dioxide.
For injecting the carbon dioxide into the ocean repositories under the ground, a step of selecting a site into which the carbon dioxide is injected, a step of injecting the carbon dioxide into the selected site, and a step of monitoring the state after injecting the carbon dioxide are performed generally. The steps described above are very expensive and requires large scale equipments. In addition, the injection of the carbon dioxide into the ocean repositories requires long time for performing the steps described above. Therefore, the injection of the carbon dioxide into the ocean repositories may have a lot of economic constraints. Compared to the injection of the carbon dioxide into the ocean repositories, formation of the carbonate minerals for sequestering the carbon dioxide may be favorable economically, because equipments for forming the carbonate minerals can be fabricated in a small-to-midium scale and can be independently operated according to industrial settings.